David Hayward runs the blog nakedpastor as a graffiti artist on the walls of religion where he critiques religion… specifically Christianity and the church. He also runs the online community The Lasting Supper where people can help themselves discover, explore and live in spiritual freedom.

http://triangulations.wordpress.com/ Sabio Lantz

I think dropping “Faith”, “Love”, “Jesus”, “God”, “Patriotism”, “Justice” and more can be equally very useful. All these abstractions we use, can be mind-traps. Dropping them can lead to a very unstable place, however. So dropping on- at-a-time is a good plan. Later, after gaining some insight from this freedom, we can perhaps re-embracing our former abstractions as useful tools, rather than letting them enslave us. They are just words, after all.

“Belief” was the first abstraction I dropped — in my early 30′s. I began to see how silly this concept was:

(a) First, we all hold multiple contrary beliefs simultaneously.

(b) Second, there is no stable “Self” that “holds” anything.

(c) Lastly, what we tell ourselves we belief tells us little about our real self — and instead, we tend to use these abstraction to signal others and falsely comfort ourselves.

Seeing these habits of mind and language, helped me undo lots of my silliness — political, religious, psychological and more. And in the end, I have only been able to embrace my silliness with compassion.

Chester McMackin

Every now and then, some of us, especially this fellow, have periods of temporary disbelief. This opens up the use of the brain the Creator gave us and allows reasonable questions ( originating from the God Give brain ). Eventually , a buildup to belief sets in, which later may return to the disbelief stage and the process continues. With each stage there are some reinforcements, and some reduction factors .

I will keep searching and asking questions, but with the knowledge that I will NEVER ,in earthly occupancy ,have THE answer.

Love research.

What to do ?……….just keep asking …………………………..

http://religiouscomics.net/ Jeff P

Yes. I view belief as kind-of like a fleeting personal preference in what fancies you. Like picking out what to wear in the morning. Maybe one morning you want to wear a pink shirt but then the next day you feel more like wearing a blue shirt. My “beliefs” can even change throughout the day. At some points, I side fairly strongly on the atheist side that there is no creator being and no hereafter when we die. At other times I feel that we just don’t know the answers to these questions. So I have one foot in atheism and one foot in agnosticism and shift my weight to either foot throughout the day depending on many factors. In fact, it might be healthy to have each foot in slightly different world-views to give the mind something to work on. If you have both feet in exactly the same place, you can easily be pushed over.

Mike Bravener

Mike Bravener

We all need something to believe or believe in.

http://triangulations.wordpress.com/ Sabio Lantz

I often think about “God-belief” in three categories. And depending on the category, being a believer, agnostic or atheist has different impacts:

(1) Creator God Believing in a Creator-God is as useful as believing in a Gnome named Fred. Because not believing in either has no impact.

(2) Magic God Believing that there is a spirit/spook/demon or such that can intervene in our lives and affect health, wealth, success or failure is a totally different thing.

In the former, being an agnostic is fine since it is the same as being an atheist. In the later, being a believer in a magic that doesn’t work can have bad consequences.

(3) Salvation Tribal God The third type of god that is harmful to be an agnostic about is one that separates people by beliefs. We need to reject this sort of thinking.

So, when we think of the need to decide, we need to think about what not-deciding could cost us. Of course, salvationists believe the same — if we don’t decide to believe Jesus stories, we burn.

http://nakedpastor.com/ nakedpastor

makes sense

http://theoldadam.wordpress.com/ Steve Martin

Belief in some thing is a far cry from faith in Someone.

People will believe in anything and everything. But can only come to a living faith in Christ Jesus through the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Revisit Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus and you’ll see Jesus say that himself.

http://religiouscomics.net/ Jeff P

I’m agnostic towards a creator God (I think His name might be Steve ) and atheistic towards the salvation tribal God. I take a more nuanced position towards a magical God. I’m atheistic towards notions that religious or occult rites and rituals have any effect whatsoever but I do hold that there may be aspects to reality that fall outside what we currently know or what may even be knowable. Therefore I do relate to the strictest definition of agnosticism about what is knowable. On a practical level, though, I am atheistic towards a magical God.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined Bob Seidensticker

Perhaps this is naïve, but just redefining “unbelief” as not a bad thing seems to cut the Gordian Knot to me.

Anyway, it works for me. Seems that if God gave us this big brain, it would be a shame to not use it. When it tells you something is not worthy of belief, I think that’s worth paying attention to.

klhayes

Jesus has helped my unbelief a lot. I see things done in the name of Jesus and really question if He would be ok with such behavior and ideas.